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Yandex Adds Foreign Content to Its Search Index

May 19, 2010

Internet, May 19, 2010. Yandex offers its users an option of limiting their search only to foreign websites. To search in English or other Latin alphabet-based languages on yandex.ru, users can enable the global search filter and see results exclusively from the foreign web resources. The global search is also available at the company’s experimental www.yandex.com launched for testing new search algorithms.

Yandex has been indexing foreign websites and adding global content to its search results for two years already. According to Yandex’s analysts, web users in Russia look for, first and foremost, locally relevant information in their own language, with foreign websites being only an extension to local search results. However, it may happen so that the user wants to receive an answer specifically from a foreign website. Yandex can now satisfy this need in only one click.

User queries in one of the Latin-alphabet based languages total to 12-15% of all searches on Yandex. But not every foreign language query automatically requires limiting search specifically to foreign content. The product name of some gadget more often than not signals the user’s intention to buy this model close to their home or read feedback from other local users. To meet this demand, Yandex’s search results page now has the option to view either local or foreign search results separately.

Foreign web search is also available at www.yandex.com, the company’s global search beta designed for honing and tweaking its algorithms based on query statistics and user feedback. Yandex plans to expand its search index to deliver multimedia results and other useful answers.

Currently, Yandex indexes more than 4bn pages in languages based on the Latin alphabet, with the majority of these pages being in English. Yandex indexer gives priority, first and foremost, to those pages that offer the answers to the most popular user queries in languages other than Russian. Ranking formula for Yandex’s global search is based on the comapny’s proprietary MatrixNet technology.

For those users, who would like to have their foreign search results translated into Russian, Yandex offers automated translation feature launched in December 2009. Currently, Yandex search supports web page translation from English, German, Spanish, Italian and French.